Increase Brightness Quotes

Say “no” only when it really matters. Wear a bright red shirt with bright orange shorts? Sure. Put water in the toy tea set? Okay. Sleep with your head at the foot of the bed? Fine. Samuel Johnson said, “All severity that does not tend to increase good, or prevent evil, is idle.

This book is called "Blue Nights" because at the time I began it I found my mind turning increasingly to illness, to the end of promise, the dwindling of the days,the inevitability of the fading, the dying of the brightness. Blue nights are the opposite of the dying of the brightness, but they are also its warning.

In these dark and uncertain times, there can be great value in imagining a bit of star in each human soul. Not just that it gives some hope for humanity at a time when man’s inhumanity to man seems ever on the increase; but also because it points to an inner brightness that can light the way in dark times.

That infinite and indescribable good which is there above races as swiftly to love as a ray of light to a bright body. It gives of itself according to the ardor it finds, so that as charity spreads farther the eternal good increases upon it, and the more souls there are who love, up there, the more there are to love well, and the more love they reflect to each other, as in a mirror.

Three years in London had not changed Richard, although it had changed the way he perceived the city. Richard had originally imagined London as a gray city, even a black city, from pictures he had seen, and he was surprised to find it filled with color. It was a city of red brick and white stone, red buses and large black taxis, bright red mailboxes and green grassy parks and cemeteries. It was a city in which the very old and the awkwardly new jostled each other, not uncomfortably, but without respect; a city of shops and offices and restaurants and homes, of parks and churches, of ignored monuments and remarkably unpalatial palaces; a city of hundreds of districts with strange names - Crouch End, Chalk Farm, Earl's Court, Marble Arch - and oddly distinct identities; a noisy, dirty, cheerful, troubled city, which fed on tourists, needed them as it despised them, in which the average speed of transportation through the city had not increased in three hundred years, following five hundred years of fitful road-widening and unskillful compromises between the needs of traffic, whether horse-drawn, or, more recently, motorized, and the need of pedestrians; a city inhabited by and teeming with people of every color and manner and kind.

What happened was this: I got an image in my head that never got out. We see a great many things and can remember a great many things, but that is different. We get very few of the true images in our heads of the kind I am talking about, the kind that become more and more vivid for us as if the passage of the years did not obscure their reality but, year by year, drew off another veil to expose a meaning which we had only dimly surmised at first. Very probably the last veil will not be removed, for there are not enough years, but the brightness of the image increases and our conviction increases that the brightness is meaning, or the legend of meaning, and without the image our lives would be nothing except an old piece of film rolled on a spool and thrown into a desk drawer among the unanswered letters.

In fact, it has become increasingly profitable not to innovate. Imagine just how much progress we’ve missed out on because thousands of bright minds have frittered away their time dreaming up hyper complex financial products that are ultimately only destructive.

And in these times of increasing equality, it would be churlish having given women the right to vote, not to give them the right to murder. Or at least the equal chance to be considered as a suspect in a murder.

Don’t just exist; do something meaningful with your life. Discover a problem and fix it. Don’t just fit in; make it a point to brighten your corner. Decide to resolve your challenges. Don’t just manage; go extra mile and win your race. Never give up the fight. You will win. Don’t just be able; always make sure you are available. Be present to make a change. Don’t just be alive; once you have arrived, find the reason why and make that reason accomplished. Don’t just wish; be passionate about what you wish to see happen. Rise up and make it happen. Don’t just create; create to change; change to improve; improve to increase. Aspire to inspire. Don’t just be making a living; make a life and leave an indelible footstep wherever you step. I want to meet you and many others on the top. Don’t be left out!

because at the time I began it I found my mind turning increasingly to illness, to the end of promise, the dwindling of the days, the inevitability of the fading, the dying of the brightness. Blue nights are the opposite of the dying of the brightness, but they are also its warning.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under! But compare the health of the two men, and you shall see that the white man has lost his aboriginal strength. If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad axe, and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to his grave. The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His note-books impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance-office increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity entrenched in establishments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue. For every Stoic was a Stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christian?

We get very few of he true images in our heads of the kind I am talking about, the kind which become more and more vivid for us as if the passage of the years did not obscure their reality but, year by year, drew off another veil to expose a meaning which we had only dimly surmised at first. Very probably the last veil will not be removed, for there are not enough years, but the brightness of the image increases and our conviction increases that the brightness is meaning, or the legend of meaning, and without the image our lives would be nothing except an old piece of film rolled on a spool and thrown into a desk drawer of unanswered letters.

On one of these occasions, "suddenly there hovered around the top of the rock a brightness of unequaled clearness and color, which, in increasingly smaller circles thickened, was the enchanting figure of the beautiful Lore.

As the landscape turned increasingly chaotic and murderous, the streams of refugees swelled. Another headlong, fearful escape of the kind that in collective dreams, in legends, would be misremembered and reimagined into pilgrimage or crusade ... the dark terror behind transmuted to a bright hope ahead, the bright hope becoming a popular, perhaps someday a national, delusion. Embedded invisibly in it would remain the ancient darkness, too awful to face, thriving, emerging in disguise, vigorous, evil, destructive, inextricable.

Now, of course, having failed in every attempt to subdue the Glades by frontal attack, we are slowly killing it off by tapping the River of Grass. In the questionable name of progress, the state in its vast wisdom lets every two-bit developer divert the flow into drag-lined canals that give him 'waterfront' lots to sell. As far north as Corkscrew Swamp, virgin stands of ancient bald cypress are dying. All the area north of Copeland had been logged out, and will never come back. As the glades dry, the big fires come with increasing frequency. The ecology is changing with egret colonies dwindling, mullet getting scarce, mangrove dying of new diseases born of dryness.

I don’t want to stop legal immigration to this country. In fact, I would like to reform and increase immigration in some important ways. Our current immigration laws are upside down—they make it tough on the people we need to have here, and easy for the people we don’t want here. This country is a magnet for many of the smartest, hardest-working people born in other countries, yet we make it difficult for these bright people who follow the laws to settle here.

I picture you as a young woman, bright, ambitious. You’ll be looking to make a niche for yourself in whatever dim, echoing caverns of academia may still exist by your time. I situate you at your desk, your hair tucked back behind your ears, your nail polish chipped—for nail polish will have returned, it always does. You’re frowning slightly, a habit that will increase as you age. I hover behind you, peering over your shoulder: your muse, your unseen inspiration, urging you on.

Murky Water, Dusty Mirror Murky water is turbid; let it settle and it clears. A dusty mirror is dim; clean it and it is bright. What I realize as I observe this is the Tao of clarifying the mind and perceiving its essence. The reason why people's minds are not clear and their natures are not stable is that they are full of craving and emotion. Add to this eons of mental habit, acquired influences deluding the mind, their outgrowths clogging up the opening of awareness - this is like water being murky, like a mirror being dusty. The original true mind and true essence are totally lost. The feelings and senses are unruly, subject to all kinds of influences, taking in all sorts of things, defiling the mind. If one can suddenly realize this and change directions, wash away pollution and contamination, gradually remove a lifetime of biased mental habits, wandering thoughts and perverse actions, increasing in strength with persistence, refining away the dross until there is nothing more to be refined away, when the slag is gone the gold is pure. The original mind and fundamental essence will spontaneously appear in full, the light of wisdom will suddenly arise, and one will clearly see the universe as though it were in the palm of the hand, with no obstruction. This is like murky water returning to clarity when settled, like a dusty mirror being restored to brightness when polished. That which is fundamental is as ever: without any lack.

We find ourselves in a historical moment of pervasive mediocrity. Fuelled by basic human drives - flights from death and boredom - the new technologies, bright and all consuming, increasingly blur the lines between direct experience and representation. A photograph of an apple is not food and the Internet has neither scent nor texture.

Of course, there’s no clear line between who creates wealth and who shifts it. Lots of jobs do both. There’s no denying that the financial sector can contribute to our wealth and grease the wheels of other sectors in the process. Banks can help to spread risks and back people with bright ideas. And yet, these days, banks have become so big that much of what they do is merely shuffle wealth around, or even destroy it. Instead of growing the pie, the explosive expansion of the banking sector has increased the share it serves itself.4 Or take the legal profession. It goes without saying that the rule of law is necessary for a country to prosper. But now that the U.S. has seventeen times the number of lawyers per capita as Japan, does that make American rule of law seventeen times as effective?5 Or Americans seventeen times as protected? Far from it. Some law firms even make a practice of buying up patents for products they have no intention of producing, purely to enable them to sue people for patent infringement. Bizarrely, it’s precisely the jobs that shift money around – creating next to nothing of tangible value – that net the best salaries. It’s a fascinating, paradoxical state of affairs. How is it possible that all those agents of prosperity – the teachers, the police officers, the nurses – are paid so poorly, while the unimportant, superfluous, and even destructive shifters do so well?

I picture you as a young woman, bright, ambitious. You’ll be looking to make a niche for yourself in whatever dim, echoing caverns of academia may still exist by your time. I situate you at your desk, your hair tucked back behind your ears, your nail polish chipped—for nail polish will have returned, it always does. You’re frowning slightly, a habit that will increase as you age. I hover behind you, peering over your shoulder: your muse, your unseen inspiration, urging you on. You’ll labour over this manuscript of mine, reading and rereading, picking nits as you go, developing the fascinated but also bored hatred biographers so often come to feel for their subjects. How can I have behaved so badly, so cruelly, so stupidly? you will ask. You yourself would never have done such things! But you yourself will never have had to.

After several extreme very high altitude night shifts, returning to sea level and exposure to increased oxygen and bright sunlight would bring on intestinal pains and diarrhea after eating the first large meal.

I listen to a radio segment about scientists measuring the radioactive decay after such large-scale catastrophes as September 11 or the 2003 tsunami in Indonesia. It turns out that nuclear decay, which is, if not a constant, as close to such a thing as we can get, inexplicably increases after these events. As if contingent matter echoed or shadowed or even shared our sufferings (and our joys?). As if creation itself cried out with us.

We get very few of the true images in our heads of the kind I am talking about, the kind which become more and more vivid for us as if the passage of the years did not obscure their reality but, year by year, drew off another veil to expose a meaning which we had only dimly surmised at first. Very probably the last veil will not be removed, for there are not enough years, but the brightness of the image increases and our conviction increases that the brightness is meaning, or the legend of meaning, and without the image our lives would be nothing except an old piece of film rolled on a spool and thrown into a desk drawer among the unanswered letters.

The paradox of the modern age, I realized, is that we live in a world that is closely integrated in some ways, but fragmented in others. Shocks are increasingly contagious. But we continue to behave and think in tiny silos.

I believe there is nothing that our better nature needs more absolutely than music, no other art of perfection possesses that strange power of gliding into our every emotion and forming a part of it; poetry, we can only enjoy at times when the spirit is attuned to it, either by calmness, joy, or certain sorts of emotion; but in times of intense grief, who could command one's attention to listen to poetry however beautiful, who could but cast a glance upon the most perfect paintings or even regard the loveliness of flowers, their very brightness of hue would make discord in the heart, & seem unkindly gay; but whose sorrow is not soothed by music, the loud mellow organ peals, with its bewildering solemnity sinks into the soul, mixes with most powerful feelings, calms & sanctifies it in happiness our joys are expressed & increased by music from the sweet lullaby, sung by a low voiced mother, to the last sad requiem at the grave, music has been unceasingly the soul's true panacea. Music that on our spirit gentlier lies Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes.

Just because someone is intimidated by your light, doesn’t mean you shine less bright or dim it! In fact, it means you should shine even brighter; especially in an increasingly dark world. There are those who need that light & goodness. You’ll never know whose life you’ll touch!

One recurrent factor that complicated the emotions of these very bright individuals was the ongoing discrepancy between what was expected of them by their parents, grandparents, and teachers and even themselves and their frequent failure to achieve the expected success. Most of these patients had struggled since early childhood with continuing conflict between their picture of themselves as exceptionally bright and talented and their view of themselves as disappointing failures, unable to “deliver the goods” expected of them. Some had been very successful in their childhood, earning high grades and strong praise during the elementary school years, then gradually lost status and self-esteem due to increasing evidence of their difficulty in coping with the escalating demands of middle school, high school, and postsecondary schooling.

The sixties began what many admirers of Eliot would consider a bleak period. The anxiety of influence of the profession at large seemed to inspire quick and increasingly uninformed dismissals of Eliot, and these repeated denigrations produced, predictably, a generation of students with vague and inaccurate impressions about his poetry and ideas. But there is a bright side to Eliot studies of the last quarter century. The general retreat from Eliot coincided with the beginning of basic and important work on his ideas, especially on his early philosophical writings.

He wished his mom had stayed in Taiwan. Raised him here, native. He wished his mom had died early, leaving him to do things for himself. Neil wished for 10 percent increases in kindness, tolerance, social skills, confidence and attractiveness and then felt cheated in life by 10 percent.

In the bipolar patients we have studied, there is a significantly increased number of small areas of focal signal hyperintensities [areas of increased water concentration] suggestive of abnormal tissue. These are what neurologists sometimes refer to as ‘unidentified bright objects,’ or UBOs.

Last year I had a very unusual experience. I was awake, with my eyes closed, when I had a dream. It was a small dream about time. I was dead, I guess, in deep black space high up among many white stars. My own consciousness had been disclosed to me, and I was happy. Then I saw far below me a long, curved band of color. As I came closer, I saw that it stretched endlessly in either direction, and I understood that I was seeing all the time of the planet where I had lived. It looked like a woman’s tweed scarf; the longer I studied any one spot, the more dots of color I saw. There was no end to the deepness and variety of the dots. At length, I started to look for my time, but, although more and more specks of color and deeper and more intricate textures appeared in the fabric, I couldn’t find my time, or any time at all that I recognized as being near my time. I couldn’t make out so much as a pyramid. Yet as I looked at the band of time, all the individual people, I understood with special clarity, were living at the very moment with great emotion, in intricate detail, in their individual times and places, and they were dying and being replaced by ever more people, one by one, like stitches in which whole worlds of feeling and energy were wrapped, in a never-ending cloth. I remembered suddenly the color and texture of our life as we knew it- these things had been utterly forgotten- and I thought as I searched for it on the limitless band, “that was a good time then, a good time to be living.” And I began to remember our time. I recalled green fields with carrots growing, one by one, in slender rows. Men and women in bright vests and scarves came and pulled the carrots out of the soil and carried them in baskets to shaded kitchens, where they scrubbed them with yellow brushes under running water…I saw may apples in forest, erupting through leaf-strewn paths. Cells on the root hairs of sycamores split and divided and apples grew striped and spotted in the fall. Mountains kept their cool caves, and squirrels raced home to their nests through sunlight and shade. I remembered the ocean, and I seemed to be in the ocean myself, swimming over orange crabs that looked like coral, or off the deep Atlantic banks where whitefish school. Or again I saw the tops of poplars, and the whole sky brushed with clouds in pallid streaks, under which wilds ducks flew, and called, one by one, and flew on. All these things I saw. Scenes grew in depth and sunlit detail before my eyes, and were replaced by ever more scenes, as I remembered the life of my time with increasing feeling. At last I saw the earth as a globe in space, and I recalled the ocean’s shape and the form of continents, saying to myself with surprise as I looked at the planet, “Yes, that’s how it was then, that part there we called ‘France’”. I was filled with the deep affection of nostalgia- and then I opened my eyes.

Stay alive. Stay alive. Stay alive,” he swayed over and over, putting all the force he could muster into the demand. As though the universe sensed the importance of speed, his pace suddenly increased. His feet carried him across the desert faster than he’d ever gone before. Without stopping, he peered down at his hands and saw his marks. Bright blue and taunting.

After that, Kestrel sought him out. She used the excuse of those lessons he had given her. She said that she wanted more. She acquired a number of menial skills, like how to blacken boots. Arin was easy to find. Although raids on the countryside continued, he increasingly relied on lieutenants to lead the sorties. He spent more time at home. “I don’t know what he thinks he’s doing,” Sarsine said. “He’s giving officers under his command the chance to prove their worth,” Kestrel said. “He’s showing his trust in them and letting them build their confidence. It’s sound military strategy.” Sarsine gave her a hard look. “He’s delegating,” Kestrel said. “He’s shirking. And for what, I’m sure you know.” This struck a bright match of pleasure within Kestrel.

And so you were in here, chatting with God?" Bruce stared at her face, studying her features in minute detail. His voice dropped to a soft, velvety whisper. "I wanted to thank Him for my many blessings." The burning of her eyes increased. She would not cry like some ninny just because Bruce was happy. He was a devout and wonderful person who always looked to the bright side. Knowing that prompted her to say, "You're such a good man, Bruce." "I'm a fortunate man, in many, many ways." He made a grand gesture toward the glass blocks. "It's a beautiful, sunny day, and my very own church is almost complete." "It is shaping up. Everyone will like it." His thumb moved to her bottom lip with a teasing, gentle touch. "Good friends surround me, and I enjoy good health." "All things you deserve." He smiled. "And I've been given the greatest gift of all." "What's that?" He laughed, tweaked her chin. "You." "Me?" He slowly nodded. "God's given me a lot. But best of all, He's given me you." He took her mouth in a long, toe-curling, stomach-tightening kiss, and in a husky rumble: "I'll be thinking Him every day for the rest of my life." -Bruce and Cyn

Airports, on the other hand, are like airport bestsellers. They’re easy to read, you forget them quickly, you promise yourself to never again succumb to their temptation, and yet the brightness, those signs, those letters in metallic relief . . . And the passengers who consume those airport bestsellers are increasingly worthy of them. Beings with decreasing capacity for concentration, robots of flesh and bone who can’t go even a minute without connecting to their devices and extensions, as if they were waiting for the confirmation of the success of a sports star they idolize or the news that they’ve become fathers or mothers, even though their respective spouses are right there beside them in that very moment, looking after little kids hooked up to tablets where they surf without waves or a beach.

You chide yourself for walking too far ahead, for regressing into 80s song lyrics territory so soon. But then he says, "The supermassive black hole at the center of the milky way recently sparked 75 times brighter over the course of a 2 hour period, and twice as bright as it's ever been in the 20 years astronomers have been monitoring it." By now you're used to him talking Science, but you're not sure where he's going with this. "One theory," he continues "is that the event was caused by a star about 15 times bigger than the sun getting close to the edge of the black hole disturbing some gasses, heating things up, increasing the infrared radiation from the edge. But get this, we observed that star getting close to the black hole about a year before we observed the affects on the black hole." "That just shows how vast the universe is, how enormous the distance," you say. "Exactly! Distances, plural. The distance between the star and the edge of the black hole, and the distance between the black hole and Earth. So, I say all of this to say that sometimes wheels are set in motion long before the spark is manifest. Is that the same thing as fate? I don't know but...I do know that rare brilliant events take time.

I picture you as a young woman, bright, ambitious. you'll be looking to make a niche for yourself in whatever dim, echoing caverns of academia may still exist by your time. I situate you at your desk, your hair tucked back behind your ears, [...] frowning slightly, a habit that will increase as you age. I hover behind you, peering over your shoulder: your muse, your unseen inspiration, urging you on.

Phaethon asked: “Do you think there is something wrong with the Sophotechs? We are Manorials, father! We let Rhadamanthus control our finances and property, umpire our disputes, teach our children, design our thoughtscapes, and even play matchmaker to find us wives and husbands!” “Son, the Sophotechs may be sufficient to advise the Parliament on laws and rules. Laws are a matter of logic and common sense. Specially designed human-thinking versions, like Rhadamanthus, can tell us how to fulfill our desires and balance our account books. Those are questions of strategy, of efficient allocation of resources and time. But the Sophotechs, they cannot choose our desires for us. They cannot guide our culture, our values, our tastes. That is a question of the spirit.” “Then what would you have us do? Would you change our laws?” “Our mores, not our laws. There are many things which are repugnant, deadly to the spirit, and self-destructive, but which law should not forbid. Addiction, self-delusion, self-destruction, slander, perversion, love of ugliness. How can we discourage such things without the use of force? It was in response to this need that the College of Hortators evolved. Peacefully, by means of boycotts, public protests, denouncements, and shunnings, our society can maintain her sanity against the dangers to our spirit, to our humanity, to which such unboundried liberty, and such potent technology, exposes us.” (...) But Phaethon certainly did not want to hear a lecture, not today. “Why are you telling me all this? What is the point?” “Phaethon, I will let you pass through those doors, and, once through, you will have at your command all the powers and perquisites I myself possess. The point of my story is simple. The paradox of liberty of which you spoke before applies to our entire society. We cannot be free without being free to harm ourselves. Advances in technology can remove physical dangers from our lives, but, when they do, the spiritual dangers increase. By spiritual danger I mean a danger to your integrity, your decency, your sense of life. Against those dangers I warn you; you can be invulnerable, if you choose, because no spiritual danger can conquer you without your own consent. But, once they have your consent, those dangers are all-powerful, because no outside force can come to your aid. Spiritual dangers are always faced alone. It is for this reason that the Silver-Gray School was formed; it is for this reason that we practice the exercise of self-discipline. Once you pass those doors, my son, you will be one of us, and there will be nothing to restrain you from corruption and self-destruction except yourself. “You have a bright and fiery soul, Phaethon, a power to do great things; but I fear you may one day unleash such a tempest of fire that you may consume yourself, and all the world around you.

As always happens when women lead lonely lives for any length of time without male society, on Anatole’s appearance all the three women of Prince Bolkonsky’s household felt that their life had not been real till then. Their powers of reasoning, feeling, and observing, immediately increased tenfold, and their life, which seemed to have been passed in darkness, was suddenly lit up by a new brightness full of significance.

As always happens when women lead lonely lives for any length of time without male society, on Anatole’s appearance all the three women of Prince Bolkonski’s household felt that their life had not been real till then. Their powers of reasoning, feeling, and observing immediately increased tenfold, and their life, which seemed to have been passed in darkness, was suddenly lit up by a new brightness, full of significance.

They did this at the bank I worked at. We all had to go on a course where bright, sparkly people with frightening smiles exhorted us to embrace change because those who can’t die out. I think they cited the dinosaurs.’ ‘So they weren’t killed by an asteroid at all, then?’ said Bashford, astonished. ‘Not according to the expensive people hired to tell us that our expertise, the working relationships we’d built up over the years, all our hard work was now utterly valueless – as would we be if we didn’t get with the new programme. According to them, it was their inability to adapt to this month’s new ideas and working practices that did for the dinosaurs and the asteroid had nothing to do with it. They were quite horrified at our lack of enthusiasm for massive redundancies while senior managers – reluctantly, of course – accepted promotions and pay rises with increased bonuses.

        In the static mode an observer may unify the pieces of a puzzle, but only as a blueprint—kinetics add the third dimention of depth, and the fourth of history. The motion, however, must be on the human scale, which happens also to be that of birds, waves, and clouds. Were a bullet to be made sentient, it still would see or hear or smell or feel nothing in land or water or air except its target. So, too, with a passenger in any machine that goes faster than a Model A. As speed increases, reality thins and becomes at the pace of a jet airplane no more substantial than a computer readout.         Running suits a person who seeks to look inward, through a fugue of pain, to study the dark self. A person afraid of the dark had better walk—strenuous enough for the rhythm of the feet to pace those of heart and lungs, relaxed enough to let him look outward, through joy, to a bright creation.

Orlando, who had just dipped her pen in the ink, and was about to indite some reflection upon the eternity of all things, was much annoyed to be impeded by a blot, which spread and meandered round her pen. . . . She dipped it again. The blot increased. She tried to go on with what she was saying but no words came. Next she began to decorate the blot with wings and whiskers, till it became a round-headed monster, something between a bat and a wombat. But as for writing poetry with Basket and Bartholemew in the room, it was impossible. No sooner had she said 'impossible' than, to her astonishment and alarm, the pen began to curve and caracole with the smoothest possible fluency. Her page was written in the neatest sloping Italian hand with the most insipid verses she had ever read in her life: I am myself but a vile link Amid life's weary chain, But I have spoken hallowed words, Oh, do not say in vain! . . . . . She was so changed, the soft carnation cloud Once mantling o'er her cheek like that which eve Hangs o'er the sky, glowing with roseate hue, Had faded into paleness, broken by Bright burning blushes, torches of the tomb, but here, by an abrupt movement she spilt the ink over the page and blotted it from human sight she hoped for ever. She was all of a quiver, all of a stew. Nothing more repulsive could be imagined than to feel the ink flowing thus in cascades of involuntary inspiration.

Upon the whole, however, I am quite vain enough and well satisfied enough. The work is rather too light and bright and sparkling: it wants shade; it wants to be stretched out here and there with a long chapter of sense, if it could be had; if not, of solemn specious nonsense, about something unconnected with the story, — an essay on writing, a critique on Walter Scott, or the history of Buonaparte, or something that would form a contrast, and bring the reader with increased delight to the playfulness

Aarya looks increasingly flustered. "Ines, that's private-" "Wow, Aarya, who knew you had such a big heart?" Ash says, now wearing a smile as well. Aarya's mouth opens. "I have no such thing. Don't you dare even suggest it." "No sense in hiding it," Ines says. "Might as well just come out and admit the truth." Aarya's face turns bright red. "I can't wait until Jag kills us all. Then I won't have to listen to this crap for a second longer." Even though it's a morbid joke, we all laugh at her absurdity.

...there had been too much light ever since they left the island of Ramandu -- the sun too large (though not too hot), the sea too bright, the air too shining. Now the light grew no less -- if anything increased -- but they could bear it. They could look straight up at the sun without blinking. They could see more light than they had ever seen before...And the next morning, when the sun rose, now five or six times its old size, they stared hard into it and could see the very feathers of the birds that came flying into it.

See, birds of every varied voice Around us in the woods rejoice, On creeper, shrub, and plant alight, Or wing from tree to tree their flight. Each bird his kindly mate has found, And loud their notes of triumph sound, Blending in sweetest music like The distant warblings of the shrike. See how the river banks are lined With birds of every hue and kind. Here in his joy the Koïl sings, There the glad wild-cock flaps his wings. The blooms of bright Aśokas526where The song of wild bees fills the air, And the soft whisper of the boughs Increase my longing for my spouse. The vernal flush of flower and spray Will burn my very soul away. What use, what care have I for life If I no more may see my wife Soft speaker with the glorious hair, And eyes with silken lashes fair? Now is the time when all day long The Koïls fill the woods with song. And gardens bloom at spring's sweet touch Which my beloved loved so much. Ah me, Sumitrá's son, the fire Of sorrow, sprung from soft desire, Fanned by the charms the spring time shows, Will burn my heart and end my woes, Whose sad eyes look on each fair tree,

Many Fujiyamas lie in a row along our coast to the south. As the distance increases, their sombre blackness seems to be lit up by a deep red light. They take on every shade from red to lilac, and all the colours have a glowing depth that is neved found in the landscape at home, or at most only in some exquisite flowers. In the holy stillness, everything is lit by a supernatural brightness. Two gulls fly low and silent close by the hut toward the fiord. They are lit up by the red rays of the bright sun. Their magnificent broad wings are a deep pink in the turquoise sky.

From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty's rose might never die, But as the riper should by time decease, His tender heir might bear his memory: But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel, Making a famine where abundance lies, Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel. Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament And only herald to the gaudy spring, Within thine own bud buriest thy content, And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding. Pity the world, or else this glutton be, To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

I believe many of us now live as if we value things more than people. In America, we spend more time than ever at work, and we earn more money than any generation in history, but we spend less and less time with our loved ones as a result. Likewise, many of us barely think twice about severing close ties with friends and family to move halfway across the country in pursuit of career advancement. We buy exorbitant houses—the square footage of the average American home has more than doubled in the past generation—but increasingly we use them only to retreat from the world. And even within the home-as-refuge, sealed off from the broader community “out there,” each member of the household can often be found sitting alone in front of his or her own private screen—exchanging time with loved ones for time with a bright, shiny object instead. Now, I’m not saying that any of us—if asked—would claim to value things more than people. Nor would we say that our loved ones aren’t important to us. Of course they are. But many people now live as if achievement, career advancement, money, material possessions, entertainment, and status matter more. Unfortunately, such things don’t confer lasting happiness, nor do they protect us from depression. Loved ones do.

prior probability that the sun will rise, since it’s prior to seeing any evidence. It’s not based on counting the number of times the sun has risen on this planet in the past, because you weren’t there to see it; rather, it reflects your a priori beliefs about what will happen, based on your general knowledge of the universe. But now the stars start to fade, so your confidence that the sun does rise on this planet goes up, based on your experience on Earth. Your confidence is now a posterior probability, since it’s after seeing some evidence. The sky begins to lighten, and the posterior probability takes another leap. Finally, a sliver of the sun’s bright disk appears above the horizon and perhaps catches “the Sultan’s turret in a noose of light,” as in the opening verse of the Rubaiyat. Unless you’re hallucinating, it is now certain that the sun will rise. The crucial question is exactly how the posterior probability should evolve as you see more evidence. The answer is Bayes’ theorem. We can think of it in terms of cause and effect. Sunrise causes the stars to fade and the sky to lighten, but the latter is stronger evidence of daybreak, since the stars could fade in the middle of the night due to, say, fog rolling in. So the probability of sunrise should increase more after seeing the sky lighten than after seeing the stars fade. In mathematical notation, we say that P(sunrise | lightening-sky), the conditional probability of sunrise given that the sky is lightening, is greater than P(sunrise | fading-stars), its conditional probability given that the stars are fading. According to Bayes’ theorem, the more likely the effect is given the cause, the more likely the cause is given the effect: if P(lightening-sky | sunrise) is higher than P(fading-stars | sunrise), perhaps because some planets are far enough from their sun that the stars still shine after sunrise, then P(sunrise | lightening sky) is also higher than P(sunrise | fading-stars).

Of equal significance is the idea, also common among the Gnostics, of the σπɩνθήρ or spark.139 It corresponds to the scintilla vitae, the “little spark of the soul” in Meister Eckhart,140 which we meet with rather early in the teachings of Saturninus.141 Similarly Heraclitus, “the physicist,” is said to have conceived the soul as a “spark of stellar essence.”142 Hippolytus says that in the doctrine of the Sethians the darkness held “the brightness and the spark of light in thrall,”143 and that this “very small spark” was finely mingled in the dark waters144 below.145 Simon Magus146 likewise teaches that in semen and milk there is a very small spark which “increases and becomes a power boundless and immutable.

If we asuffer, we shall also breign with him: if we cdeny him, he also will deny us: 13 If we abelieve not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot bdeny himself. 14 Of these things put them in remembrance, charging them before the Lord that they astrive not about words to no profit, but to the subverting of the hearers. 15 aStudy to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, brightly dividing the word of truth. 16 But shun profane and avain babblings: for they will increase unto more bungodliness. 17 And their aword will eat as doth a canker: of whom is bHymenæus and Philetus; 18 Who concerning the truth have aerred, saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some.

Exercise increases brainpower. You know that aerobic exercise increases the flow of oxygen to the heart, but did you also know that it increases the flow of oxygen to the brain? When a rush job (or a rush of anxiety) keeps you up all night, a judicious exercise break can keep you bright until dawn. According to nutrition research scientist Judith J. Wurtman, PhD, when you’re awake and working during hours that you’d normally be asleep, your internal body rhythms tell your body to cool down, even though your brain is racing along. Simply standing up and stretching, walking around the room, or doing a couple of sit-ups every hour or so speeds up your metabolism, warms up your muscles, increases your ability to stay awake, and, in Dr. Wurtman’s words, “prolongs your ability to work smart into the night.” Eureka!

Among the most virulent of all such cultural parasite-equivalents is the religion-based denial of organic evolution. About one-half of Americans (46 percent in 2013, up from 44 percent in 1980), most of whom are evangelical Christians, together with a comparable fraction of Muslims worldwide, believe that no such process has ever occurred. As Creationists, they insist that God created humankind and the rest of life in one to several magical mega-strokes. Their minds are closed to the overwhelming mass of factual demonstrations of evolution, which is increasingly interlocked across every level of biological organization from molecules to ecosystem and the geography of biodiversity. They ignore, or more precisely they call it virtue to remain ignorant of, ongoing evolution observed in the field and even traced to the genes involved. Also looked past are new species created in the laboratory. To Creationists, evolution is at best just an unproven theory. To a few, it is an idea invented by Satan and transmitted through Darwin and later scientists in order to mislead humanity. When I was a small boy attending an evangelical church in Florida, I was taught that the secular agents of Satan are extremely bright and determined, but liars all, man and woman, and so no matter what I heard I must stick my fingers in my ears and hold fast to the true faith. We are all free in a democracy to believe whatever we wish, so why call any opinion such as Creationism a virulent cultural parasite-equivalent? Because it represents a triumph of blind religious faith over carefully tested fact. It is not a conception of reality forged by evidence and logical judgment. Instead, it is part of the price of admission to a religious tribe. Faith is the evidence given of a person’s submission to a particular god, and even then not to the deity directly but to other humans who claim to represent the god. The cost to society as a whole of the bowed head has been enormous. Evolution is a fundamental process of the Universe, not just in living organisms but everywhere, at every level. Its analysis is vital to biology, including medicine, microbiology, and agronomy. Furthermore psychology, anthropology, and even the history of religion itself make no sense without evolution as the key component followed through the passage of time. The explicit denial of evolution presented as a part of a “creation science” is an outright falsehood, the adult equivalent of plugging one’s ears, and a deficit to any society that chooses to acquiesce in this manner to a fundamentalist faith.

And so I learned things, gentlemen. Ah, one learns when one has to; one learns when one needs a way out; one learns at all costs. One stands over oneself with a whip; one flays oneself at the slightest opposition. My ape nature fled out of me, head over heels and away, so that my first teacher was almost himself turned into an ape by it and was taken away to a mental hospital. Fortunately he was soon let out again. But I used up many teachers, several teachers at once. As I became more confident of my abilities, as the public took and interest in my progress and my future began to look bright, I engaged teachers for myself, engaged them in five communicating rooms, and took lessons from all at once by dint of leaping from one room to the other. That progress of mine! How the rays of knowledge penetrated from all sides into my awakening brain? I do not deny it: I found it exhilarating. But I must also confess: I did not overestimate it, not even then, much less now. With an effort which up till now has never been repeated I managed to reach the cultural level of an average European. In itself that might be nothing to speak of, but it is something insofar as it has helped me out of my cage and opened a special way out for me, the way of humanity. There is an excellent idiom: to fight one’s way through the thick of things; that is what I have done, I have fought through the thick of things. There was nothing else for me to do, provided that freedom was not to be my choice. As I look back on my development and survey what I have achieved so far, I do not complain, but I am not complacent either. With my hands in my trouser pockets, my bottle of wine on the table, I half lie and half sit in my rocking chair and gaze out of the window: If a visitor arrives I receive him with propriety. My manager sits in the anteroom; when I ring, he comes and listens to what I have to say. Nearly every evening I give a performance, and I have a success that could hardly be increased. When I come home late at night from banquets, from scientific receptions, from social gatherings, there sits waiting for me a half-trained chimpanzee and I take comfort from her as apes do. By day I cannot bear to see her; for she has the insane look of the bewildered half-broken animal in her eye, no one else sees it, but I do, and I cannot bear it. On the whole, at any rate, I have achieved what I have set out to achieve. But do not tell me that it was not worth the trouble. In any case, I am not appealing to any man’s verdict. I am only imparting knowledge, I am only making a report. To you also, honored Members of the Academy, I have only made a report.

Jack coughed slightly and offered his hand. “Hi, uh. I’m Jack.” Kim took it. “Jack what?” “Huh?” “Your last name, silly.” “Jackson.” She blinked at him. “Your name is Jack Jackson?” He blushed. “No, uh, my first name’s Rhett, but I hate it, so…” He gestured to the chair and she sat. Her dress rode up several inches, exposing pleasing long lines of creamy skin. “Well, Jack, what’s your field of study?” “Biological Engineering, Genetics, and Microbiology. Post-doc. I’m working on a research project at the institute.” “Really? Oh, uh, my apple martini’s getting a little low.” “I’ve got that, one second.” He scurried to the bar and bought her a fresh one. She sipped and managed to make it look not only seductive but graceful as well. “What do you want to do after you’re done with the project?” Kim continued. “Depends on what I find.” She sent him a simmering smile. “What are you looking for?” Immediately, Jack’s eyes lit up and his posture straightened. “I started the project with the intention of learning how to increase the reproduction of certain endangered species. I had interest in the idea of cloning, but it proved too difficult based on the research I compiled, so I went into animal genetics and cellular biology. It turns out the animals with the best potential to combine genes were reptiles because their ability to lay eggs was a smoother transition into combining the cells to create a new species, or one with a similar ancestry that could hopefully lead to rebuilding extinct animals via surrogate birth or in-vitro fertilization. We’re on the edge of breaking that code, and if we do, it would mean that we could engineer all kinds of life and reverse what damage we’ve done to the planet’s ecosystem.” Kim stared. “Right. Would you excuse me for a second?” She wiggled off back to her pack of friends by the bar. Judging by the sniggering and the disgusted glances he was getting, she wasn’t coming back. Jack sighed and finished off his beer, massaging his forehead. “Yes, brilliant move. You blinded her with science. Genius, Jack.” He ordered a second one and finished it before he felt smallish hands on his shoulders and a pair of soft lips on his cheek. He turned to find Kamala had returned, her smile unnaturally bright in the black lights glowing over the room. “So…how did it go with Kim?” He shot her a flat look. “You notice the chair is empty.” Kamala groaned. “You talked about the research project, didn’t you?” “No!” She glared at him. “…maybe…” “You’re so useless, Jack.” She paused and then tousled his hair a bit. “Cheer up. The night’s still young. I’m not giving up on you.” He smiled in spite of himself. “Yet.” Her brown eyes flashed. “Never.

She kissed his lips and felt his smile form. Alone in this beautiful space, Blake and Livia made things right. Blake kissed her slowly and patiently, like he had all the time in the world. Carefully, they eased back to lie down, and Blake braced himself above her. He smelled of mint and fresh soap. Livia put her hands on his chest and felt the densely packed muscles there. Empowered by his adoration, she shrugged off her fleece shirt, enjoying the feeling of being trapped between his arms. Blake’s eyes became stormy seas. “Damn it all to hell,” he cursed. Despite his words, Livia believed she was winning this battle of seduction. Blake kissed her mouth and sucked on her bottom lip. He moved to her earlobe and breathed, “First, I will blow, then I will lick, last I will bite.” Holy crap. Blake blew a gentle stream of minty breath along the outside of Livia’s ear, down to her neck, and along the edge of her breasts where they peeked out of her bright blue bra. Blake took his time creating an elaborate pattern on her stomach, and Livia was pretty sure he’d spelled the word torture. He increased the pressure of his breath as he grazed below her belly button to the top of her jeans. He skipped back to her mouth and gave her another long, slow kiss. “And now I lick,” he murmured. Livia bit back the embarrassingly loud moan she felt building. He gently traced the same trail his breath had left, this time with his tongue. When he reached her breast, she lost control and grabbed his hair, intent on kissing him. “No. No.” Blake held her wrists above her head. “I’ve done this to you so many times in my mind. I won’t have you rush me.” Livia groaned and arched her back in an effort to change his mind. But his slow, sexy smile told her he was doing it his way. “Fine.” Livia dutifully kept her hands above her head as he picked up where he’d left off. His tongue had her making noises that surely scared the wildlife. He spent an inordinate amount of time licking just above her belt buckle. Then again he was back to her mouth. He spoke through his kiss. “I’m going to bite you now.” Blake began down the same flaming path on Livia’s body with his teeth, nibbling in time with her heartbeat. When it speeded up, he bit slightly harder. After what seemed to be sixteen million glorious years, Blake was at the top of her jeans again. A light, almost invisible, mist from the gray clouds now gave the clearing a slick sheen. The cool rain and his hot mouth were ecstasy. Blake unbuckled her belt and used his tongue and teeth to unbutton her jeans. He chuckled as he flipped her zipper with his teeth. Each pop of the releasing zipper filled the woods as he blew again on the newly revealed skin. Livia knew what to expect this time: blow, lick, bite. Oh, sweet God! This is heaven. At last, Livia could no longer obey and reached her hands down to his angelic face. Blake glanced up as if to rebuke her, but quickly smiled and let her sit up to meet his lips. Love. Crazy, soon, ever. Love, Livia’s mind raged. She tried to tell him with kisses, but it wasn’t enough. Blake knelt before her, and Livia straddled his thighs. She pulled back to try putting it into words and noticed how Blake glistened, covered in tiny raindrops. The clear, cool pond she’d described to Cole had just exploded over them. But instead of drowning, they wore it like a cloak.

The principal energy sources of our present industrial civilization are the so-called fossil fuels. We burn wood and oil, coal and natural gas, and, in the process, release waste gases, principally CO2, into the air. Consequently, the carbon dioxide content of the Earth’s atmosphere is increasing dramatically. The possibility of a runaway greenhouse effect suggests that we have to be careful: Even a one- or two-degree rise in the global temperature can have catastrophic consequences. In the burning of coal and oil and gasoline, we are also putting sulfuric acid into the atmosphere. Like Venus, our stratosphere even now has a substantial mist of tiny sulfuric acid droplets. Our major cities are polluted with noxious molecules. We do not understand the long-term effects of our course of action. But we have also been perturbing the climate in the opposite sense. For hundreds of thousands of years human beings have been burning and cutting down forests and encouraging domestic animals to graze on and destroy grasslands. Slash-and-burn agriculture, industrial tropical deforestation and overgrazing are rampant today. But forests are darker than grasslands, and grasslands are darker than deserts. As a consequence, the amount of sunlight that is absorbed by the ground has been declining, and by changes in the land use we are lowering the surface temperature of our planet. Might this cooling increase the size of the polar ice cap, which, because it is bright, will reflect still more sunlight from the Earth, further cooling the planet, driving a runaway albedo* effect? Our lovely blue planet, the Earth, is the only home we know. Venus is too hot. Mars is too cold. But the Earth is just right, a heaven for humans. After all, we evolved here. But our congenial climate may be unstable. We are perturbing our poor planet in serious and contradictory ways. Is there any danger of driving the environment of the Earth toward the planetary Hell of Venus or the global ice age of Mars? The simple answer is that nobody knows. The study of the global climate, the comparison of the Earth with other worlds, are subjects in their earliest stages of development. They are fields that are poorly and grudgingly funded. In our ignorance, we continue to push and pull, to pollute the atmosphere and brighten the land, oblivious of the fact that the long-term consequences are largely unknown.

Here I will mention one more strange thing; but whether this peculiarity was owing to my shadow at all, I am not able to assure myself. I came to a village, the inhabitants of which could not at first sight be distinguished from the dwellers in our land. They rather avoided than sought my company, though they were very pleasant when I addressed them. But at last I observed, that whenever I came within a certain distance of any one of them, which distance, however, varied with different individuals, the whole appearance of the person began to change; and this change increased in degree as I approached. When I receded to the former distance, the former appearance was restored. The nature of the change was grotesque, following no fixed rule. The nearest resemblance to it that I know, is the distortion produced in your countenance when you look at it as reflected in a concave or convex surface—say, either side of a bright spoon. Of this phenomenon I first became aware in rather a ludicrous way. My host's daughter was a very pleasant pretty girl, who made herself more agreeable to me than most of those about me. For some days my companion-shadow had been less obtrusive than usual; and such was the reaction of spirits occasioned by the simple mitigation of torment, that, although I had cause enough besides to be gloomy, I felt light and comparatively happy. My impression is, that she was quite aware of the law of appearances that existed between the people of the place and myself, and had resolved to amuse herself at my expense; for one evening, after some jesting and raillery, she, somehow or other, provoked me to attempt to kiss her. But she was well defended from any assault of the kind. Her countenance became, of a sudden, absurdly hideous; the pretty mouth was elongated and otherwise amplified sufficiently to have allowed of six simultaneous kisses. I started back in bewildered dismay; she burst into the merriest fit of laughter, and ran from the room. I soon found that the same undefinable law of change operated between me and all the other villagers; and that, to feel I was in pleasant company, it was absolutely necessary for me to discover and observe the right focal distance between myself and each one with whom I had to do. This done, all went pleasantly enough. Whether, when I happened to neglect this precaution, I presented to them an equally ridiculous appearance, I did not ascertain; but I presume that the alteration was common to the approximating parties. I was likewise unable to determine whether I was a necessary party to the production of this strange transformation, or whether it took place as well, under the given circumstances, between the inhabitants themselves.

Our time together is drawing short, my reader. Possibly you will view these pages of mine as a fragile treasure box, to be opened with the utmost care. Possibly you will tear them apart, or burn them: that often happens to words. Perhaps you’ll be a student of history, in which case I hope you’ll make something useful of me: a warts-and-all portrait, a definitive account of my life and times, suitably footnoted; though if you don’t accuse me of bad faith I will be astonished. Or, in fact, not astonished: I will be dead, and the dead are hard to astonish. I picture you as a young woman, bright, ambitious. You’ll be looking to make a niche for yourself in whatever dim, echoing caverns of academia may still exist by your time. I situate you at your desk, your hair tucked back behind your ears, your nail polish chipped—for nail polish will have returned, it always does. You’re frowning slightly, a habit that will increase as you age. I hover behind you, peering over your shoulder: your muse, your unseen inspiration, urging you on. You’ll labour over this manuscript of mine, reading and rereading, picking nits as you go, developing the fascinated but also bored hatred biographers so often come to feel for their subjects. How can I have behaved so badly, so cruelly, so stupidly? you will ask. You yourself would never have done such things! But you yourself will never have had to.

I recognize magnesite.  From my explosives training years ago.  It’s a source of magnesium.” He muttered, turning the stone over and over in his hand.  “Correct again.  As you increase your Mining skill, you will eventually learn how to convert the raw ore into usable material.  Or you can simply purchase the Refining and Smelting skills.” Max shook his head.  “Assuming I ever make it to a settlement of some kind.” He stared harder at the stone.  “I am going to try something.  You might want to back up.” Stepping well back from the fire himself, he picked up a discarded leaf from one of his firewood sticks and laid it flat on the ground.  Using his thumbnail, he scraped at the magnesite vein inside the rock.  Initially he was very careful and slow, not wanting to create friction, and thus heat, as he scratched.  A few small particles dropped onto the leaf.  Another two minutes of careful scraping, and he had accumulated a tiny pile of the mineral, about the size of a pea.  Setting the stone down, he carefully wrapped the leaf around the magnesite dust. “Alright, here goes nothing.” He took another step back from the fire, then gently tossed the leaf bundle into it.  There was a brief delay, then a bright white flash as the heat reached the magnesite dust and a molten flame shot upward for about two seconds. Skill level increase!  Your Mining skill has increased by +1! Max uttered is best evil overlord laugh.  “Muah ha ha!

muddy ground. He pushed himself backward, his hands frantically splashing in puddles of muddied water. The darkness of the cemetery made it impossible to see anything more than a shadow, but Cody knew what stalked him. He knew the evil coming. He screamed and jumped back to his feet. He ran as fast as he could on the slippery ground. Another loud crash of thunder followed a bright flash of lightning. He was so close, so close to the entrance to the cemetery, but the rain, stronger than before, hammered down upon him. He splashed through puddles of water, flinching from the sheets of rain slapping his face. He struggled to increase his speed, his tears blending in with the rain. Four bicycles lay scattered on the ground near the entrance of the cemetery. Cody yanked his bicycle upright off the ground and checked behind him, but there wasn’t anything there. He hesitated, his heart breaking at the sight of his friends’ bikes lying next to his. “I’m so sorry,” he cried before mounting his own bike. The mud, caked onto the soles of his shoes, caused his feet to slip on the wet pedals. He peered into the dark depths of the cemetery again and found the familiar shadow creeping towards him. Whimpering again, Cody reached down to scrape the mud off with his bare hands, and then pedaled a mile to his home in the heavy rain. Rain-drenched, Cody jumped the curb in front of his house and dropped his bicycle on the lawn. He ran to his open bedroom window, stumbled through it, and fell onto the floor. His bedroom curtains flapped inward

freeze, so she opted for pants with a thick, nubbly sweater that added substance to her frame. As always, her necklace was in place, and she donned a lovely bright cashmere scarf to keep her neck warm. When she stepped back to appraise herself in the mirror, she felt she looked almost as good as she had before chemotherapy started. Collecting her purse, she took a couple more pills—the pain wasn’t as bad as yesterday, but no reason to risk it—and called an Uber. Pulling up to the gallery a few minutes after closing time, she saw Mark through the window, discussing one of her photographs with a couple in their fifties. Mark offered the slightest of waves when Maggie stepped inside and hurried to her office. On her desk was a small stack of mail; she was quickly sorting through it when Mark suddenly tapped on her open door. “Hey, sorry. I thought they’d make a decision before you arrived, but they had a lot of questions.” “And?” “They bought two of your prints.” Amazing, she thought. Early in the life of the gallery, weeks could go by without the sale of even a single print of hers. And while the sales did increase with the growth of her career, the real renown came with her Cancer Videos. Fame did indeed change everything, even if the fame was for a reason she wouldn’t wish upon anyone. Mark walked into the office before suddenly pulling up short. “Wow,” he said. “You look fantastic.” “I’m trying.” “How do you feel?” “I’ve been more tired than usual, so I’ve been sleeping a lot.” “Are you sure you’re still up for this?” She could see the worry in his expression. “It’s Luanne’s gift, so I have to go. And besides, it’ll help me get into the Christmas spirit.

Hm? These cherry tomatoes... they've been dried. Right, Tadokoro?" "Y-yes, sir! Back home, winter can be really long. In the summer we harvest a lot of vegetables and preserve them so we can have them in winter too. Mostly by sun drying them. When I was little, I'd help with that part. That's when my Ma -um, I mean, my mother- taught me how to dry them in the oven. You cut the cherry tomatoes in half, sprinkle them with rock salt and then slowly dry them at a low temperature, around 245* F. I, um... thought they'd make a nice accent for the terrine..." "Right. Tomatoes are rich in the amino acid glutamate essential in umami. Drying them concentrates the glutamate, greatly increasing the amount of sweetness the tongue senses. In Shinomiya's case... ... his nine-vegetable terrine focused on fresh vegetables, with their bright and lively flavors. But this recette accentuates the savory deliciousness of vegetables preserved over time. Both dishes are vegetable terrines... ... but one centers on the delicacy of the fresh... ... while the other on the savory goodness of the ripe and aged. They are two completely different approaches to the same ingredient- vegetables!" "Mmm! This is the flavor that warms the soul. You can feel my darling Megumi's kindness in every bite." "For certain. If Shinomiya is the "Vegetable Magician"... ... I would say Megumi is... a modest spirit who gifts you with the bounty of nature. a Vegetable Colobuckle!" *A tiny spirit from Ainu folklore said to live under butterbur leaves* "No, that's not what she is! Megumi is a spirit who brings happiness and tastiness... a Vegetable Warashi!" *Childlike spirits from Japanese folklore said to bring good fortune* "Or perhaps she is that spirit which delivers the bounty of vegetables from the snowy north... a Vegetable Yukinoko!" *Small snow sprites* "It's not winter, so you can't call her a snow sprite!" "How come all of you are picking spirits from Japanese folklore anyway?

ANOTHER GALAXY, ANOTHER TIME. The Old Republic was the Republic of legend, greater than distance or time. No need to note where it was or whence it came, only to know that … it was the Republic. Once, under the wise rule of the Senate and the protection of the Jedi Knights, the Republic throve and grew. But as often happens when wealth and power pass beyond the admirable and attain the awesome, then appear those evil ones who have greed to match. So it was with the Republic at its height. Like the greatest of trees, able to withstand any external attack, the Republic rotted from within though the danger was not visible from outside. Aided and abetted by restless, power-hungry individuals within the government, and the massive organs of commerce, the ambitious Senator Palpatine caused himself to be elected President of the Republic. He promised to reunite the disaffected among the people and to restore the remembered glory of the Republic. Once secure in office he declared himself Emperor, shutting himself away from the populace. Soon he was controlled by the very assistants and boot-lickers he had appointed to high office, and the cries of the people for justice did not reach his ears. Having exterminated through treachery and deception the Jedi Knights, guardians of justice in the galaxy, the Imperial governors and bureaucrats prepared to institute a reign of terror among the disheartened worlds of the galaxy. Many used the Imperial forces and the name of the increasingly isolated Emperor to further their own personal ambitions. But a small number of systems rebelled at these new outrages. Declaring themselves opposed to the New Order they began the great battle to restore the Old Republic. From the beginning they were vastly outnumbered by the systems held in thrall by the Emperor. In those first dark days it seemed certain the bright flame of resistance would be extinguished before it could cast the light of new truth across a galaxy of oppressed and beaten peoples … From the First Saga Journal of the Whills

Cataract Treatment Advanced by Laser Eye Surgery It is estimated that half of individuals aged 65 and above will grow a cataract at some period in their life. A cataract is an eye condition that may be hazardous to your eyesight. In a healthy eye, there's a clear lens which enables you to focus. For those who have a cataract, the lens slowly deteriorates over a long period of time. Your vision can be blurry as the cataract develops, until the whole-of the lens is muddy. Your sight will slowly get worse, becoming blurry or misty, which makes it tough to see clearly. Cataracts can occur at any age but generally develop as you get older. Cataract surgery involves removing the cataract by emulsifying the lens by sonography and replacing it with a small plastic lens. This artificial lens is then stabilised within your natural lens that was held by the same lens capsule. The results restore clear vision and generally wholly remove the significance of reading glasses. However, years following the surgery, patients can occasionally experience clouding of their sight again. Vision can become blurred and lots of patients have issues with glare and bright lights. What is truly happening is a thickening of the lens capsule that holds the artificial lens. Medically this is known as Posterior Lens Capsule Opacification. This thickening of the lens capsule occurs in the back, meaning natural lens cells develop across the rear of the lens. These cells are sometimes left behind subsequent cataract surgery, causing problems with the light entering the-eye and hence problems with your vision. Laser Eye getlasereyesurgery.co.uk y Treatment Lasers are beams of power which may be targeted quite correctly. Nowadays the technology will be used increasingly for the purpose of rectifying the vision of patients after cataract operation. The YAG laser is a focused laser with really low energy levels and can be used to cut away a small circle shaped area in the lens capsule which enables light to once again pass through to the rear of the artificial lens. A proportion of the lens capsule is retained in order to keep the lens in place, but removes enough of the cells to let the light to the retina. If you want to read more information, please Click Here

I DON'T WANT to talk about me, of course, but it seems as though far too much attention has been lavished on you lately-that your greed and vanities and quest for self-fulfillment have been catered to far too much. You just want and want and want. You believe in yourself excessively. You don't believe in Nature anymore. It's too isolated from you. You've abstracted it. It's so messy and damaged and sad. Your eyes glaze as you travel life's highway past all the crushed animals and the Big Gulp cups. You don't even take pleasure in looking at nature photographs these days. Oh, they can be just as pretty as always, but don't they make you feel increasingly ... anxious? Filled with more trepidation than peace? So what's the point? You see the picture of the baby condor or the panda munching on a bamboo shoot, and your heart just sinks, doesn't it? A picture of a poor old sea turtle with barnacles on her back, all ancient and exhausted, depositing her five gallons of doomed eggs in the sand hardly fills you with joy, because you realize, quite rightly, that just outside the frame falls the shadow of the condo. What's cropped from the shot of ocean waves crashing on a pristine shore is the plastics plant, and just beyond the dunes lies a parking lot. Hidden from immediate view in the butterfly-bright meadow, in the dusky thicket, in the oak and holly wood, are the surveyors' stakes, for someone wants to build a mall exactly there-some gas stations and supermarkets, some pizza and video shops, a health club, maybe a bulimia treatment center. Those lovely pictures of leopards and herons and wild rivers-well, you just know they're going to be accompanied by a text that will serve only to bring you down. You don't want to think about it! It's all so uncool. And you don't want to feel guilty either. Guilt is uncool. Regret maybe you'll consider. Maybe. Regret is a possibility, but don't push me, you say. Nature photographs have become something of a problem, along with almost everything else. Even though they leave the bad stuff out-maybe because you know they're leaving all the bad stuff out-such pictures are making you increasingly aware that you're a little too late for Nature. Do you feel that? Twenty years too late? Maybe only ten? Not way too late, just a little too late? Well, it appears that you are. And since you are, you've decided you're just not going to attend this particular party.

I need only, to make them reappear, pronounce the names Balbec, Venice, Florence, within whose syllables had gradually accumulated the longing inspired in me by the places for which they stood. Even in spring, to come upon the name Balbec in a book sufficed to awaken in me the desire for storms at sea and for Norman Gothic; even on a stormy day the name Florence or Venice would awaken the desire for sunshine, for lilies, for the Palace of the Doges and for Santa Maria del Fiore. But if these names thus permanently absorbed the image I had formed of these towns, it was only by transforming that image, by subordinating its reappearance in me to their own special laws; and in consequence of this they made it more beautiful, but at the same time more different from anything that the towns of Normandy or Tuscany could in reality be, and, by increasing the arbitrary delights of my imagination, aggravated the disenchantment that was in store for me when I set out upon my travels. They magnified the idea that I had formed of certain places on the surface of the globe, making them more special and in consequence more real. I did not then represent to myself cities, landscapes, historical monuments, as more or less attractive pictures, cut out here and there of a substance that was common to them all, but looked on each of them as on an unknown thing, different in essence from all the rest, a thing for which my soul thirsted and which it would profit from knowing. How much more individual still was the character they assumed from being designated by names, names that were for themselves alone, proper names such as people have! Words present to us a little picture of things, clear and familiar, like the pictures hung on the walls of schoolrooms to give children an illustration of what is meant by a carpenter's bench, a bird, an anthill, things chosen as typical of everything else of the same sort. But names present to us— of persons, and of towns which they accustom us to regard as individual, as unique, like persons— a confused picture, which draws from them, from the brightness or darkness of their tone, the colour in which it is uniformly painted, like one of those posters, entirely blue or entirely red, in which, on account of the limitations imposed by the process used in their reproduction or by a whim on the designer's part, not only the sky and the sea are blue or red, but the ships and the church and the people in the streets.

In the future that globalists and feminists have imagined, for most of us there will only be more clerkdom and masturbation. There will only be more apologizing, more submission, more asking for permission to be men. There will only be more examinations, more certifications, mandatory prerequisites, screening processes, background checks, personality tests, and politicized diagnoses. There will only be more medication. There will be more presenting the secretary with a cup of your own warm urine. There will be mandatory morning stretches and video safety presentations and sign-off sheets for your file. There will be more helmets and goggles and harnesses and bright orange vests with reflective tape. There can only be more counseling and sensitivity training. There will be more administrative hoops to jump through to start your own business and keep it running. There will be more mandatory insurance policies. There will definitely be more taxes. There will probably be more Byzantine sexual harassment laws and corporate policies and more ways for women and protected identity groups to accuse you of misconduct. There will be more micro-managed living, pettier regulations, heavier fines, and harsher penalties. There will be more ways to run afoul of the law and more ways for society to maintain its pleasant illusions by sweeping you under the rug. In 2009 there were almost five times more men either on parole or serving prison terms in the United States than were actively serving in all of the armed forces.[64] If you’re a good boy and you follow the rules, if you learn how to speak passively and inoffensively, if you can convince some other poor sleepwalking sap that you are possessed with an almost unhealthy desire to provide outstanding customer service or increase operational efficiency through the improvement of internal processes and effective organizational communication, if you can say stupid shit like that without laughing, if your record checks out and your pee smells right—you can get yourself a J-O-B. Maybe you can be the guy who administers the test or authorizes the insurance policy. Maybe you can be the guy who helps make some soulless global corporation a little more money. Maybe you can get a pat on the head for coming up with the bright idea to put a bunch of other guys out of work and outsource their boring jobs to guys in some other place who are willing to work longer hours for less money. Whatever you do, no matter what people say, no matter how many team-building activities you attend or how many birthday cards you get from someone’s secretary, you will know that you are a completely replaceable unit of labor in the big scheme of things.

Our galaxy is surrounded by a cloud of about fifty nearby galaxies, known as our Local Group. Foremost among them is the Andromeda Galaxy, a beautiful spiral galaxy, and the only galaxy in our group larger than our own. Gravity is pulling the two toward each other, and in four billion years (before our Sun has died) they will collide and unite. With so much distance between the stars of each galaxy, this collision will do surprisingly little to upset the stars and their planets. Its main effect will be to disrupt the delicate spiral structures of the partners, probably merging into a more uniform elliptical galaxy about three times as large. Eventually (in hundreds of billions of years) all the other galaxies in our group will have merged in too, forming a single giant galaxy.28 Zooming further out, we see many more groups of galaxies, some with as many as a thousand members.29 Eventually these groups resolve into a larger structure: the cosmic web—long, thick threads of galaxies, called filaments. These filaments criss-cross space in a kind of three-dimensional network, as if someone took a random set of points in space and connected each to its nearest handful of neighbors. Where the filaments intersect, space is bright and rich with galaxies.30 Between such filaments are dark and empty expanses, known as cosmic voids. As far as we can tell, this cosmic web continues indefinitely. At the very least, it continues as far as we can see or go. It is these final limits on our knowledge and action that appear to set the ultimate scale in our universe. We have known for almost a century that our universe is expanding, pulling the groups of galaxies apart. And twenty years ago we discovered that this expansion is accelerating. Cosmologists believe this puts a hard limit on what we will ever be able to observe or affect.31 We can currently see a sphere around us extending out 46 billion light years in all directions, known as the observable universe. Light from galaxies beyond this sphere hasn’t yet had time to reach us.32 Next year we will see a little further. The observable universe will increase in radius by a single light year, and about 25 more galaxies will come into view. But on our leading cosmological theory, the rate at which new galaxies become visible will decline, and those currently more than 63 billion light years away will never become visible from the Earth. We could call the region within this distance the eventually observable universe.33 But much more importantly, accelerating expansion also puts a limit on what we can ever affect. If, today, you shine a ray of light out into space, it could reach any galaxy that is currently less than 16 billion light years away. But galaxies further than this are being pulled away so quickly that neither light, nor anything else we might send, could ever affect them.34

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. …yes, in spite of all, Some shape of beauty moves away the pall From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon, Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon For simple sheep; and such are daffodils With the green world they live in; Nor do we merely feel these essences For one short hour; no, even as the trees That whisper round a temple become soon Dear as the temple’s self, so does the moon, The passion poesy, glories infinite, Haunt us till they become a cheering light Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast, That, whether there be shine, or gloom o’ercast, They alway must be with us, or we die. For ‘twas the morn: Apollo’s upward fire Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre Of brightness so unsullied, that therein A melancholy spirit well might win Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine Into the winds: rain-scented eglantine Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun; Man’s voice was on the mountains; and the mass Of nature’s lives and wonders puls’d tenfold, To feel this sun-rise and its glories old. With a faint breath of music, which ev’n then Fill’d out its voice, and died away again. Within a little space again it gave Its airy swellings, with a gentle wave, To light-hung leaves, in smoothest echoes breaking Through copse-clad vallies,—ere their death, oer-taking The surgy murmurs of the lonely sea. All I beheld and felt. Methought I lay Watching the zenith, where the milky way Among the stars in virgin splendour pours; And travelling my eye, until the doors Of heaven appear’d to open for my flight, I became loth and fearful to alight From such high soaring by a downward glance: So kept me stedfast in that airy trance, Spreading imaginary pinions wide. When, presently, the stars began to glide, And lo! from opening clouds, I saw emerge The loveliest moon, that ever silver’d o’er A shell for Neptune’s goblet: she did soar So passionately bright, my dazzled soul Commingling with her argent spheres did roll Through clear and cloudy, even when she went At last into a dark and vapoury tent— Whereat, methought, the lidless-eyed train Of planets all were in the blue again. To commune with those orbs, once more I rais’d My sight right upward: but it was quite dazed By a bright something, sailing down apace, Making me quickly veil my eyes and face: What I know not: but who, of men, can tell That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail, The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale, The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones, The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones, Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet, If human souls did never kiss and greet?

Last year I had a very unusual experience. I was awake, with my eyes closed, when I had a dream. It was a small dream about time. I was dead, I guess, in deep blank space high up above many white stars. My own consciousness had been disclosed to me, and I was happy. Then I saw far below me a long, curved band of color. As I came closer, I saw that it stretched endlessly in either direction, and I understood that I was seeing all the time of the planet where I had lived. It looked like a woman’s tweed scarf; the longer I studied any one spot, the more dots of color I saw. There was no end to the deepness and variety of dots. At length I started to look for my time, but, although more and more specks of color and deeper and more intricate textures appeared in the fabric, I couldn’t find my time, or any time at all that I recognized as being near my time. I couldn’t make out so much as a pyramid. Yet as I looked at the band of time, all the individual people, I understood with special clarity, were living at that very moment with great emotion, in intricate, detail, in their individual times and places, and they were dying and being replaced by ever more people, one by one, like stitches in which wholly worlds of feeling and energy were wrapped in a never-ending cloth. I remembered suddenly the color and texture of our life as we knew it- these things had been utterly forgotten- and I thought as I searched for it on the limitless band, “that was a good time then, a good time to be living.” And I began to remember our time. I recalled green fields with carrots growing, one by one, in slender rows. Men and women in bright vests and scarves came and pulled the carrots out of the soil and carried them in baskets to shaded kitchens, where they scrubbed them with yellow brushes under running water. I saw white-faced cattle lowing and wading in creeks. I saw May apples in forests, erupting through leaf-strewn paths. Cells on the root hairs of sycamores split and divided, and apples grew spotted and striped in the fall. Mountains kept their cool caves and squirrels raced home to their nests through sunlight and shade. I remembered the ocean, and I seemed to be in the ocean myself, swimming over orange crabs that looked like coral, or off the deep Atlantic banks where whitefish school. Or again I saw the tops of poplars, and the whole sky brushed with clouds in pallid streaks, under which wild ducks flew with outstretched necks, and called, one by one, and flew on. All these things I saw. Scenes grew in depth and sunlit detail before my eyes, and were replaced by ever more scenes, as I remember the life of my time with increasing feeling. At last I saw the earth as a globe in space, and I recalled the ocean’s shape and the form of continents, saying to myself with surprise as I looked at the planet, “yes, that’s how it was then, that part there was called France.” I was filled with the deep affection of nostalgia- and then I opened my eyes. We all ought to be able to conjure up sights like these at will, so that we can keep in mind the scope of texture’s motion in time.

PROLOGUE Some years ago in the Planet Orfheus ... It was dark when Lucius reached the rendezvous which had been chosen to be the new hideout. The latter had been used for several months and they were concerned that they were being followed and were close to being discovered. "I thought you were not coming. I've been waiting for you for almost an hour. I was getting anxious," Sofia said, relieved. "Sorry, love. It is becoming increasingly difficult. I almost didn't make it today. The troops were ambushed in the last invasion. Igor and many warriors returned seriously injured," Lucius replied. He looked worried. Why this sudden encounter? They had agreed that the next would be the following week. Lucius gave her a big hug, pulled her close to him, and remained silent for a few moments. His longing and desire consumed him. She meant the world to him. Without Sofia, his life would never make sense. He would never forget those eyes, serene and sincere, with a blue so bright and clear that were able to see the soul of the tormented warrior that was he. With her golden hair, Sofia looked like an angel. "Is there a problem? You're so quiet and deep in thought," she asked, puzzled. He answered, "I'm thinking about us. How long are we keeping it secret?" He walked away from her, sighing. "We can't keep lying and pretending that all is well. You have no idea how much I have to endure when you are away from me, or when I see you with him." "Love, not now. We have already discussed this subject several times. You know that our only alternative would be to flee and pray they will never find us," she replied. Sofia knew very well that the laws of the kingdom could not be disregarded. Love, respect, and loyalty were key factors that were part of the hierarchy of Orfheus. Although she had always been in love with Lucius who had never shown any interest in her, Sofia was bound to his brother Alex as a result of a pact. Over the centuries, Lucius began to change and express loving feelings for her. She never ceased to love him and both succumbed to the temptation and passion of it. Inevitably, a love affair developed between the two. Interrupting her thoughts, Lucius grabbed her by the hand and led her into the hut. This hut was located inside a vast and beautiful forest. He pulled her by the waist, gave her a passionate kiss, stroked her hair, and said softly, "Love, I missed you so much." "I also felt homesick but the real reason I came here today is to tell you something very important. I need you to listen carefully and keep calm," she said as she ran her hands through her hair which contrasted with her pale skin. Sofia did not want to scare him. However, she imagined that he would be upset and angry with the news. Unfortunately, the revelation was inevitable and sooner or later, everything would come out. "I'm pregnant," she said unceremoniously. For a brief moment, Lucius said nothing. He just stared at her without any reaction. He seemed to be in a silent battle with his own thoughts. "But how?" he babbled, not believing what he had just heard. It was surely a bombshell revelation. That would be the end for them. Sofia said, "Stay calm, love. I know this changes everything. What we were planning for months is no longer possible." She sat on a makeshift stool and continued with tears in her eyes. "With the baby coming, I cannot simply go through the portal. The baby and I would die during the crossing." Lucius replied, "Could we ask for help from Aunt Wilda? She is very powerful. Probably she would be able to break through the magic of the portals." Sofia had already thought of that. She was well aware that it was the only choice left. Aunt Wilda had always been like a mother to her. The sorceress adopted her when she was a girl, soon after her family had died in combat.

Kids are one of natural most perfect learning devices. With just a little knowing, a kid can be activated and kept content. Starting early in your kid's growth can do wonderful factors for their psychological growth in later years, and provides them a large boost over other kids their age. Comprehend youngsters are designed to comprehend. Regular actions, such as offering, diapering, enjoying, executing, going for a generate in the child baby stroller, and getting bears from Grandpa are all "educational". You do not need to do synthetic actions or extremely concentrate on "educational activities" for a kid to succeed. Care for the kid. A kid needs a full belly, a dry diaper, a comfortable atmosphere, and really like for the best possible growth. Discuss to the kid. Provide a "play by play" of what you're doing (making a cup of tea, modifying a diaper, confirming the email box. Take part in kid talk; it's designed to stimulate a kid. Read a book together. Increase and massage. Kids really like to move their systems. Learn kid massage and kid yoga exercise exercises, which help comfortable, revitalize, and stimulate. But simply shifting the kid in a way he or she likes (like clapping arms, wearing coming back and forth, "So Big!") is outstanding work out, and properly rubbing kid down with kid massage oil is outstanding for sensitive growth. Acquire a execute gym or action gym. These are generally a company recommended with children from child up to about 12 months. They mostly come in the form of comfortable, quilted or properly cushioning execute shields, sometimes raised at the edges with a space in the center for kid. They can include detachable, holding locations for small children to try to comprehend. They usually have locations that are crinkle, smooth, scrunchy styles for kid to touch, media and action. Some come with bright dazzling illumination and alarm systems and others make insane seems to be, or musical show show seems to be, and some even do both. Look around. Kids are fascinated by factors grownups take for granted: Automobiles visiting outside the screen, tanks, vegetation provided by the wind, failing outfits in the outfits clothing dryer. Go outside A child baby stroller generate can be very interesting, going to uncommon new locations like the mailing service, bakery, recreation area, and so on.Drive your car, which has best car accessories, and go for a have a eat outside. Perform to the kid. Perform child's room music, TV jingles, your popular.Play with the kid. Conventional activities like "Peek-A-Boo" or cheap baby toys, the hug the kid's belly, shifting a football coming back and forth on are outstanding kid actions. Dance with the kid in your arms.

Tap to return to the Home screen, where you'll find a list of books and other content stored on your Kindle. Back: Tap to retrace your steps. For example, you can follow a link from a book, then tap the Back button to return to your place in the book. Screen Light: Tap to access screen light controls. There are several ways to adjust screen brightness: Drag your finger along the slider until you reach the desired setting. Tap anywhere on the slider to select a specific setting. Tap the + sign to use a higher light setting, and tap the - sign to use a lower light setting. Press and hold the + sign to select the standard maximum brightness setting. Tap the Max. button to temporarily increase the screen brightness even further. Press the - sign to decrease the brightness setting. Press and hold the - sign to choose the minimum brightness setting. Kindle Store: Tap to go to the Kindle Store. Your Kindle must have an active Wi-Fi or 3G connection to use this feature. Search: Tap to bring up the search field. To exit search, tap the X on the right side of the search bar. Goodreads on Kindle: Tap to connect to the Goodreads community on your Kindle to see what your friends are reading, find book recommendations and keep track of what you’ve read and want to read. For more information, see Goodreads

Magic Spell 1 Increasing your own happiness When: Can be cast anytime   Reason: When you feel you need a little lift or you need to pick yourself up. It’s perfect for when you’re feeling anxious or down.   Spell: Place your hand on your heart and say 3 times; ‘Spirit of sun, Spirit of light, embrace my heart and make it bright’ ‘Spirit of sun, Spirit of light, embrace my heart and make it bright’ ‘Spirit of sun, Spirit of light, embrace my heart and make it bright

February 11 Is Your Hope in God Faint and Dying? Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose imagination is stayed on Thee. Isaiah 26:3 (rv mg) Is your imagination stayed on God or is it starved? The starvation of the imagination is one of the most fruitful sources of exhaustion and sapping in a worker’s life. If you have never used your imagination to put yourself before God, begin to do it now. It is no use waiting for God to come; you must put your imagination away from the face of idols and look unto Him and be saved. Imagination is the greatest gift God has given us, and it ought to be devoted entirely to Him. If you have been bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, it will be one of the greatest assets to faith when the time of trial comes, because your faith and the Spirit of God will work together. Learn to associate ideas worthy of God with all that happens in Nature—the sunrises and the sunsets, the sun and the stars, the changing seasons, and your imagination will never be at the mercy of your impulses, but will always be at the service of God. “We have sinned with our fathers . . . [and] remembered not”—then put a stiletto in the place where you have gone to sleep. “God is not talking to me just now,” but He ought to be. Remember Whose you are and Whom you serve. Provoke yourself by recollection, and your affection for God will increase tenfold; your imagination will not be starved any longer, but will be quick and enthusiastic, and your hope will be inexpressibly bright.

Piles of brain imaging studies have shown that volitional processes are associated with increases in energy use in the frontal lobes: "right here," you can say while pointing to the bright spots on the PET scan, volition originates. But the research is mute on the chicken-and-egg question of what's causing what. Does activity in the frontal lobes cause volition, or does volition trigger activity in the frontal lobes? If the former, does the activity occur unbidden, as a mere mechanical resultant, or is it in any sense free? Generally, neuroscientists assume that the brain causes everything in the mind, period-further inquiry into causality is most unwelcome.

Until the gospel events of Good Friday and Easter and the gospel promises of justification and eternal life lead you to behold and embrace God himself as your highest joy, you have not embraced the gospel of God. You have embraced some of his gifts. You have rejoiced over some of his rewards. You have marveled at some of his miracles. But you have not yet been awakened to why the gifts, the rewards, and the miracles have come. They have come for one great reason: that you might behold forever the glory of God in Christ, and by beholding become the kind of person who delights in God above all things, and by delighting display his supreme beauty and worth with ever-increasing brightness and bliss forever.2 John Piper,

FINDING FULFILLMENT For You, O God, have tested us; You have refined us as silver is refined . . . we went through fire and through water; but You brought us out to rich fulfillment. Psalm 66:10–12 NKJV Everywhere we turn, or so it seems, the world promises fulfillment, contentment, and happiness. But the contentment that the world offers is fleeting and incomplete. Thankfully, the fulfillment that God offers is all encompassing and everlasting. Sometimes, amid the inevitable hustle and bustle of life-here-on-earth, we can forfeit—albeit temporarily—the joy of Christ as we wrestle with the challenges of daily living. Yet God’s Word is clear: fulfillment through Christ is available to all who seek it and claim it. Count yourself among that number. Seek first a personal, transforming relationship with Jesus, and then claim the joy, the fulfillment, and the spiritual abundance that the Shepherd offers His sheep. In serving we uncover the greatest fulfillment within and become a stellar example of a woman who knows and loves Jesus. Vonette Bright We are never more fulfilled than when our longing for God is met by His presence in our lives. Billy Graham A TIMELY TIP Want to increase your sense of fulfillment? Then strive to find God’s path for your life . . . and follow it.

Back: Tap to retrace your steps. For example, you can follow a link from a book, then tap the Back button to return to your place in the book. Screen Light: Tap to access screen light controls. There are several ways to adjust screen brightness: Drag your finger along the slider until you reach the desired setting. Tap anywhere on the slider to select a specific setting. Tap the + sign to use a higher light setting, and tap the - sign to use a lower light setting. Press and hold the + sign to select the standard maximum brightness setting. Tap the Max. button to temporarily increase the screen brightness even further. Press the - sign to decrease the brightness setting. Press and hold the - sign to choose the minimum brightness setting.

For beneath that delicate black powder something highly unusual was happening: the book’s marbled cover was giving off a faint, but increasingly bright purple glow.

It was a gorgeous day.  A fucking gorgeous day.  It was one of those bright, breezy, unicorn-and-puppy mornings.  I mean, the unicorns weren’t out yet.  They tend to be more nocturnal to increase the odds of picking up virgins at nightclubs, but there were a couple pegasi kicking it overhead.

Aligning your body clock to the new environment requires a phase shift. It takes one day per time zone to shift. Advance or retard your body clock as many days before your trip as the number of time zones you’ll be crossing. Before traveling east, get into sunlight early in the day. Before traveling west, avoid sunlight early by keeping the curtains drawn, and instead expose yourself to bright light in the evening, to simulate what would be late afternoon sun in your destination. Once you’re on the plane, if you’re westbound, keep the overhead reading lamp on, even if it is your home bedtime. When you arrive in the western city, exercise lightly by taking a walk in the sun. That sunlight will delay the production of melatonin in your body. If you’re on an eastbound plane, wear eye shades to cover your eyes two hours or so before sunset in your destination city, to acclimate yourself to the new “dark” time.

More preposterous is an outlier company like Encana, whose hallucinations led to even more bright optimism. For 2015, the Canadian natural gas behemoth decided not to cut spending at all, taking a complete blind eye towards collapsing prices. Instead, it chose to increase spending for 2015 from $2.55b to $2.8b. In this strategy, Encana is virtually alone in the oil space. CEO Doug Suttles has called the oil drop merely an “annoyance, but not threatening” and is continuing with his two-year plan to increase Encana’s ratio of oil production from natural gas. What made Encana so special? Why was it alone choosing to step on the accelerator while virtually everyone else was feathering the brakes? Well, it probably had a bit to do with Suttles’ mistimed buy of Athlon Energy, a Permian basin start-up company that rocketed in share price in its less-than-two-year life span. In September 2014, Encana had the idea to buy Athlon for an astounding $5.9 billion, paying more than $58 a share for the fledgling company. That buy should have been accepted as a monumental error in timing, but instead has seemed to fuel the Encana fantasy. But if you’ve bought the top of the oil market, as Encana’s Doug Suttles has, then why not—I suppose it makes perfect sense to double down and ignore collapsing oil and gas markets going forward. Encana plans to increase oil production by 26% in 2015.

One mechanism is that zolpidem (and probably other sleeping pills) relax the stomach sphincter and cause gastro-esophageal regurgitation. The acid irritation may lead to infection. Incidentally, acid regurgitation may also lead to esophageal cancer, which is one of the cancers most greatly increased among sleeping pill users. At

Dream vision (Geoffrey Chaucer): And in my slepe I mette, as I lay, How African, right in that selfe aray That Scipioun him saw before that tyde Was comen, and stood right at my beddes syde Poetic vision (Blake): And by came an angel, who had a bright key, And he opened the coffins, and set them all free Narcotic vision (Thomas De Quincey): A theatre seemed suddenly opened and lighted up within my brain, which presented nightly spectacles of more than earthly splendour. Hallucination (Shakespeare): Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Epileptic vision (Dostoyevsky): His brain seemed to catch fire at brief moments...His sensation of being alive and his awareness increased tenfold at those moments which flashed by like lightning. His mind and heart were flooded by a dazzling light.

What happened was this: I got an image in my head that never got out. We see a great many things and can remember a great many things, but that is different. We get very few of the true imagines in our heads of the kind I am talking about, the kind that become more and more vivid for us as if the passage of the years did not obscure their reality but, year by year, drew off another veil to expose a meaning which we had only dimly surmised at first. Very probably the last veil will not be removed, for there are not enough years, but the brightness of the image increases and our conviction increases that the brightness is meaning, or the legend of meaning, and without the image our lives would be nothing except an old piece of film rolled on a spool and thrown into a desk drawer among the unanswered letters.

The Prophet (ﷺ) stated that: «Every heart has a cloud covering it, with the similitude of a cloud covering a shining moon. It suddenly becomes dark when the cloud covers, but its brightness returns once the cloud has passed.» (recorded by at-Tabarâni and graded reliable by al-Albâni) In this hadith, the Prophet (ﷺ) presents an analogy. Our hearts are likened to the moon; just as the moon is sometimes covered by clouds that conceal its light, the heart is sometimes covered by clouds of sin that cover its light. At other times, the clouds go away, and the light shines again in the heart. The light increases when we strive to engage in acts that will increase our eemân.

the one hand, she specified a set of manageable activities that reliably increase personal happiness. Several of them—including the top three on her list—require nothing more than a pre-suasive refocusing of attention: 1. Count your blessings and gratitudes at the start of every day, and then give yourself concentrated time with them by writing them down. 2. Cultivate optimism by choosing beforehand to look on the bright side of situations, events, and future possibilities. 3. Negate the negative by deliberately limiting time spent dwelling on problems or on unhealthy comparisons with others.

Something vast suddenly crossed my field of vision. By the time I had reacted and adjusted the magnification, it had passed out of sight into the works shed. I had a brief memory of bright, almost gaudy metal and a shimmering, flowing robe. ‘What the hell was that?’ I hissed. Midas looked at me, lowering his scope, actual fear on his face. Fischig also looked disturbed. ‘A giant, a horned giant in jewelled metal,’ Midas said. ‘He came striding out of the modular hab to the left and went straight into the shed. God-Emperor, but it was huge!’ Fischig agreed with a nod. ‘A monster,’ he said. The cones above roared again, and a rain of withering ash fluttered down across the settlement. We shrank back into the thorn-trees. Guard activity seemed to increase. ‘Rosethorn,’ my vox piped. ‘Now is not a good time,’ I hissed. It was Maxilla. He sent one final word and cut off. ‘Sanctum.’ ‘Sanctum’ was a Glossia codeword that I had given Maxilla before we had left the Essene. I wanted him in close orbit, providing us with extraction cover and overhead sensor advantages, but knew that he would have to melt away the moment any other traffic entered the system. ‘Sanctum’ meant that he had detected a ship or ships emerging from the immaterium into realspace, and was withdrawing to a concealment orbit behind the local star. Which meant that all of us on the planet were on our own. Midas caught my sleeve and pointed down at the settlement. The giant had reappeared and stood in plain view at the mouth of the shed. He was well over two metres tall, wrapped in a cloak that seemed to be made of smoke and silk, and his ornately decorated armour and horned helmet were a shocking mixture of chased gold, acidic yellow, glossy purple, and the red of fresh, oxygenated blood. In his ancient armour, the monster looked like he had stood immobile in that spot for a thousand years. Just a glance at him inspired terror and revulsion, involuntary feelings of dread that I could barely repress. A Space Marine, from the corrupted and damned Adeptus Astartes. A Chaos Marine.

Don’t say to yourself, “But God is not talking to me right now.” He ought to be. Remember whose you are and whom you serve. Encourage yourself to remember, and your affection for God will increase tenfold. Your mind will no longer be starved, but will be quick and enthusiastic, and your hope will be inexpressibly bright.

The health of your body has a direct impact on the health of your brain. In fact, there are only three degrees of separation between sitting too much and dementia. You sit for long periods of time. Your body goes into hibernation mode, depressing your metabolism and increasing your blood pressure, blood sugar, and weight.7 Your high blood pressure damages your heart and its vessels. The small vessels that feed your brain get blocked, putting you at risk of small vessel disease. Without adequate blood supply, the brain’s white matter starves to death.8 White matter acts like a telephone wire that connects brain regions so they can talk to each other. When your white matter is damaged, the communication between those brain regions breaks down just like it did in that telephone game we played as kids; in the end, the message is all mixed up and everyone is confused. It was funny back then, but it’s not funny now. The white matter damage shows up like bright lights on your brain scan called white matter hyperintensities. The scary part is that your brain could be lit up like a Christmas tree but clinically silent, meaning that you may have no noticeable symptoms until it’s too

know that building’s been empty for a year,” Daisy said uneasily, “but how—?” “Sh! Watch! Now!” The looming building seemed to blur or fuzz for a moment. Then it was as if the lake’s bright ripples had invaded the old glass a hundred yards away. Wavelets chased themselves up and down the gleaming walls, became higher, higher … and then suddenly the glass cracked all over to tiny fragments and fell away, to be followed quickly by fragmented concrete and plastic and plastic piping, until all that was left was the nude steel framework, vibrating so rapidly as to be almost invisible against the gleaming lake. Daisy covered her ears, but there was no explosion, only a long-drawn-out low crash as the fragments hit twenty floors below and dust whooshed out sideways. “Spectacular!” Fay summed up. “Knew you’d enjoy it. That little trick was first conceived by the great Tesla during his last fruity years. Research discovered it in his biog—we just made the dream come true. A tiny resonance device you could carry in your belt-bag attunes itself to the natural harmonic of a structure and then increases amplitude by tiny pushes exactly in time. Just like soldiers marching in step can break down a bridge, only this is as if it were being done by one marching ant.” He

Q: What do you think will be the future of your field? There’s too much pessimism about the future for political cartooning. I think the future’s very bright. You see more and more sites like Politico that aggressively deploy cartoons on the homepage. I think the media is becoming increasingly visual… and increasingly made to match our shrinking attention spans. The business model for cartooning is going through a rough transition now, but in the long run the thing we cartoonists do—-deliver simple-minded political messages in short easily digestible bites—-is the direction the media in general is heading. We’re living in a media landscape that seems to get more infantile and politically simple-minded all the time—-look at the huge popularity of Glenn Beck…and I saw someplace recently that Jon Stewart is now the most trusted man in America. The clowns seem to be taking over the circus. This may be bad for governance, but it can only be good news for cartoonists. The interesting part will be what the platforms are going to be, cell phones, iPads, the iChip in my forehead, whatever it is, I’m sure the combination of visual metaphor and incisive humor you find in good cartoons will adapt and evolve and really thrive in the future. (Interview with Washington City Paper)

Bright Light Adaptation Disease may occur in high altitude workers due to the accelerated aging effects that increased radiation causes.

Hearing the high thin cries in the autumn Ellen would remember the one time when she had met Miss Amanda on a path. Her bright cotton dress had come flashing in the way and she had walked quickly by, without a greeting, her mouth lifted into a bent smile and her eyes slanting away as if she said, ‘I don’t care!’ Even in her denial she added to the increasing richness of the farms.

Red and orange bell peppers are especially high in antioxidants. Red bell peppers have the highest vitamin C content, which helps to build collagen to keep your skin looking healthy. The bright colors of bell peppers are due to what are known as carotenoids. These contain powerful anti-inflammatory properties. Bell peppers make a satisfying snack on their own, especially if dipped in hummus.